“At Mrs. and Miss Ducksacreʼs, greengrocer and general fruiterer, Mortimer–street, Cavendish–square.” CHAPTER XV. Cradock Nowell had written from London to the Parsonage once, and once only. He told them how he had changed his name, because his father had cast him off; and (as he bitterly added), according to filial promise, he felt himself bound to be Nowell no longer. But he did not say what name he had taken, neither did he give any address; only he would write again when he had found some good situation. Of course he longed to hear from Amy—his own loving Amy, who begged that poor letter and bore it in her own pure bosom long after the Queenʼs head came off—but his young pride still lay hot upon him, and for Amyʼs sake he nursed it. A young man is never so proud of his honour, so prompt to deny himself anything, so strong in anotherʼs lifehold, and careless about his own living, as when he has won a true loveʼs worth, and sees it abiding for ever. Few are the good who have such luck—for the success is not of merit, any more than it is in other things; more often indeed some fish–tailed coxcomb is a womanʼs Dagon, doubly worshipped for crushing her—but when that luck does fall to the lot of a simple and honest young fellow, he piles his triple mountains up to the everlasting heaven, but makes no Babel of them. A man who chatters about his love soon exhausts himself or his subject. John Rosedew, after receiving that letter, shut every book on his table, chairs, and desk, and chimney–piece. He must think what to do, and how: and he never could think hard on the flints of daily life, while the green pastures of the dead were tempting his wayward steps away. Of course he would go to London at once, by the very next train; but whether or no should he tell his people the reason of his going? He felt so strongly inclined to tell, even at risk of domestic hysterics and parochial convulsions, that he resolved at last not to tell; for he thought of the great philosopherʼs maxim (not perhaps irrefragable), that when the right hangs dubious, we may safely conclude that it rides in the scale swinging opposite to our own wishes. To most of us (not having a quarter of John Rosedewʼs ability, and therefore likely to be a hundred times less hesitant) it seems that the maxim holds good with ourselves, or any other common mortal, but makes Truth actually cut her own throat when applied to a mind like his—a mind already too timorously and humorously self–conscious. Let 99,000 angels get on the top of John Rosedewʼs pen—which generally had a great hair in it—and dance a _faux pas_ over that question, if it was laid the wrong way; for we, whose consciences must work in corduroys and highlows, roughly conclude that right and wrong are but as button and button–hole when it comes to a question of hair–splitting. Blest are they whose conscience–edge, like the sword of Thor, can halve every wisp of wool afloat upon the brook of life.